The Truth about Corona Virus Situation and what every person

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 5:37:08 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:57:12 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.

Not very many docs will prescribe such a drug. You don't know it won't hurt a patient with this disease. They are saying ibuprofen is contraindicated for this disease. The WHO is backing away from that now, but the point is with a new disease we don't know the effects of a drug. We have testing protocols specifically to keep people safe.

More importantly, if we do what we are supposed to do and not spread this disease, we could be rid of it before any medicines are available.

I told you in early Feb this was growing exponentially and going out
of control. You said no. Now I'll tell you that thinking that we could
be rid of it without medicine or a vaccine by doing what we are doing
isn't possible. If we took more restrictive measures, followed China's
model, it might be possible, but we are not. So the C stuff looks like
a possible hope. Short of that or another drug, we're screwed.

Yes, if the US and every other affected country puts its affected areas into lock down NOW, all the infected patients will be free of the virus in less than two months. Or we can let it drag out for many months.

Our choice.

Do you see any evidence that is happening? We badly blew this already.
We had an opportunity to put Westchester County and part of WA state
into quarantine, but we didn't. Incredibly, that moron Cuomo set up
a "containment" radius of 1 mile around the Westchester hotspot.
What did that mean? Just no large gatherings. People were free to
get on the 7:05AM train to NYC. And that's what they did infecting NYC,
northern NJ too. Even now as de Blasio was talking about possibly
making NYC shelter in place, lib Cuomo forced him to back down.
No quarantines for Cuomo.

--

Rick C.

+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?

Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

I'm doing a bit of binge-reading about the 1918 'flu. So far the best
is the first 60% of Laura Spinney's "Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918
and How It Changed The World", i.e. up to the point where she stops
telling the story and starts propounding, um, well,
_less_well_supported_ psychology and public policy.

We liked

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry

Which we want to re-read now, but can't find. I think I loaned it to
someone a while ago. Astoundingly, Amazon still has two, so I ordered
another copy.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 10:12:47 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptible
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

That would involve a few million deaths - and John Larkin is old enough to be at risk - and the "minority" that would be in serious danger would be numerous enough to overwhelm the medical system, so most of them wouldn't get treated.

Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

Social distancing worked in Hubei Province. China has no new cases today.

--
Bill Sloman, sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 10:00:27 AM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 18:56, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 12:40:07 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

Looks like chloroquine plus azithromycin knocks the Wu flu dead.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vTi-g18ftNZUMRAj2SwRPodtscFio7bJ7GdNgbJAGbdfF67WuRJB3ZsidgpidB2eocFHAVjIL-7deJ7/pub
https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf
Hope it pans out on a large scale!

Me too, but there might be a political problem:

Why Hasn’t Tony Fauci Been at the Coronavirus Press Conferences?
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/tony-fauci-at-coronavirus-press-conferences.html
Quoting...

<snip>

That’s why, on Thursday, it was curious to see Fauci absent from the
podium for a second day in a row. Figures including Obama national
security adviser Susan Rice, Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart,
constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, and The View co-host Joy Behar
all wondered on Twitter why Fauci was not appearing.

End Quote...

So, who are you going to believe and/or trust? Fauci or Trump?

Certainly not leftist kremlinology. Read the papers.

Kremlinology isn't leftist - it's an approach to working out what is going on in
secretive powerful elites.

The Kremlin was the most interesting example for quite while. Trump's cabinet is now an appropriate target, though it isn't so much secretive as pathologically self-deceiving and ill-informed - Trump has fired everybody willing to express disagreement with him and what's left isn't up to much.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 9:41:44 AM UTC+11, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 6:06:23 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 22:37, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:57:12 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill
wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing the
virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break host
proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses. 10
micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out very
quickly if it works.

That's not how things work. Giving patients drugs does not tell you if
they work - that's why drug testing is so complicated with double-blind
tests, comparative studies, etc. And that is why laymen - like Trump -
should not be making public statements about drug usage or testing.

Yeah, that's what you do when a drug company is bringing a drug to market and there is no rush other than for profits. In this situation we can take a few shortcuts and that study seems pretty clear. It will be repeated by others I'm sure and the drug companies are ramping up production. But still, we need doses for millions of people and the longer it takes the more people who will need to be dosed. It's hard to ramp up exponentially.

It's actually a complete waste of time to ramp up exponentially.

Once you've documented the manufacturing process, you ought get it going in every drug factory that can put the process into effect. That's not a exponential process - it's a large step change in productive capacity.

You will be diverting resources from producing some other drugs, but only until we've got a vaccine.

Not very many docs will prescribe such a drug. You don't know it
won't hurt a patient with this disease. They are saying ibuprofen is
contraindicated for this disease. The WHO is backing away from that
now, but the point is with a new disease we don't know the effects of
a drug. We have testing protocols specifically to keep people safe.

Chloroquine may also have bad side effects for ICU corona patients.
Hydroxychloroquine seems better, but the main use looks to be for
non-ICU hospital patients.

Where did you read that in the paper?

Knowing the drug is safe for other patients certainly speeds up safety
testing, but it does not eliminate it.

If we treat patients before they need to be in the ICU all the better, a win-win.

More importantly, if we do what we are supposed to do and not spread
this disease, we could be rid of it before any medicines are
available.

The big trouble is that elimination that way is very unlikely.
Countries might manage to get it close to zero spread while they are on
lockdown, but once things are opened again, there will be new outbreaks..

Yeah, but now that we know about it we will respond much more quickly and isolate any new infections. Once it is eliminated, it is eliminated. We only need to worry about being brought in from elsewhere.

It has spread too far for containment to eliminate it.

That is not logical.

If we can't
get a vaccine, countries are going to have to be ready for quick
lockdowns every time a new outbreak flares up. Still, careful openness
with lots of testing at borders and the risk of new lockdowns would be a
lot better than continued lockdown for many months or years.

We already do this for any number of diseases. In the process we have essentially removed them from existence in many countries. This one spreads more rapidly, but that means we need travel restrictions.

It was only a couple of weeks ago people were still going out on cruise ships knowing there was a risk of this virus! We will have learned a lesson from this virus.

Some of us. Some people don't like learning new stuff - they are conservative.
Others are just dim.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 20:29:00 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk.


I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.





I'm doing a bit of binge-reading about the 1918 'flu. So far the best
is the first 60% of Laura Spinney's "Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918
and How It Changed The World", i.e. up to the point where she stops
telling the story and starts propounding, um, well,
_less_well_supported_ psychology and public policy.

We liked

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry

Which we want to re-read now, but can't find. I think I loaned it to
someone a while ago. Astoundingly, Amazon still has two, so I ordered
another copy.

I'll try to find one.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

News:

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-fda-experimental-drugs-coronavirus

Wow, if it works DT will be a hero.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:09:00 PM UTC-4, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

If you don't see that by now, there is no hope for you. Of the closed
cases worldwide, that is those that are either dead or recovered,
about 90K now, the death rate is 9.5%. You don't see that with the
flu. You also don't see one person easily infect a whole family.
We just had one family here in NJ that had a family gathering.
One guy from North Jersy infected ten people. He's dead, four of
that family are dead, 3 are in critical condition. That's not what
you see with flu. It's highly transmissible, people have no
immunity and many cases are severe.

I'm doing a bit of binge-reading about the 1918 'flu. So far the best
is the first 60% of Laura Spinney's "Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918
and How It Changed The World", i.e. up to the point where she stops
telling the story and starts propounding, um, well,
_less_well_supported_ psychology and public policy.

We liked

The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History
by John M. Barry

Which we want to re-read now, but can't find. I think I loaned it to
someone a while ago. Astoundingly, Amazon still has two, so I ordered
another copy.



--

John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc

The cork popped merrily, and Lord Peter rose to his feet.
"Bunter", he said, "I give you a toast. The triumph of Instinct over Reason"

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 6:41:44 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 6:06:23 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 22:37, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:57:12 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill
wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing the
virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break host
proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses. 10
micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out very
quickly if it works.

That's not how things work. Giving patients drugs does not tell you if
they work - that's why drug testing is so complicated with double-blind
tests, comparative studies, etc. And that is why laymen - like Trump -
should not be making public statements about drug usage or testing.

Yeah, that's what you do when a drug company is bringing a drug to market and there is no rush other than for profits. In this situation we can take a few shortcuts and that study seems pretty clear. It will be repeated by others I'm sure and the drug companies are ramping up production. But still, we need doses for millions of people and the longer it takes the more people who will need to be dosed. It's hard to ramp up exponentially.


Not very many docs will prescribe such a drug. You don't know it
won't hurt a patient with this disease. They are saying ibuprofen is
contraindicated for this disease. The WHO is backing away from that
now, but the point is with a new disease we don't know the effects of
a drug. We have testing protocols specifically to keep people safe.

Chloroquine may also have bad side effects for ICU corona patients.
Hydroxychloroquine seems better, but the main use looks to be for
non-ICU hospital patients.

Where did you read that in the paper?


Knowing the drug is safe for other patients certainly speeds up safety
testing, but it does not eliminate it.

If we treat patients before they need to be in the ICU all the better, a win-win.


More importantly, if we do what we are supposed to do and not spread
this disease, we could be rid of it before any medicines are
available.

The big trouble is that elimination that way is very unlikely.
Countries might manage to get it close to zero spread while they are on
lockdown, but once things are opened again, there will be new outbreaks..

Yeah, but now that we know about it we will respond much more quickly and isolate any new infections. Once it is eliminated, it is eliminated. We only need to worry about being brought in from elsewhere.


It has spread too far for containment to eliminate it.

That is not logical.

How are you going to contain it in the USA? It's been well ahead
of our efforts so far, there is no China like lockdown now or any
being proposed. de Blasio said he was considering a shelter in
place, which is way short of what China did and Cuomo shut him
right down, said no way for NYC. That's where we are at today
and it's rapidly spreading.

If we can't
get a vaccine, countries are going to have to be ready for quick
lockdowns every time a new outbreak flares up. Still, careful openness
with lots of testing at borders and the risk of new lockdowns would be a
lot better than continued lockdown for many months or years.

We already do this for any number of diseases. In the process we have essentially removed them from existence in many countries. This one spreads more rapidly, but that means we need travel restrictions.

Name one where this has been done without a drug or vaccine.

It was only a couple of weeks ago people were still going out on cruise ships knowing there was a risk of this virus! We will have learned a lesson from this virus.

Really? Did you see the students in FL and TX on spring break, the
crowded beaches?

--

Rick C.

-- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 11:09:00 AM UTC+11, jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:

On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

<snip>

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?

IIRR the UK national health Service sets the value of a quality-adjusted-year-of -life at about $50,000. The 20-year-old has about 60 years of life that might be saved, which would be worth $3 million dollars.

The answer is no.

Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.

It kills at least ten times more of the people it infects.

We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

Flu mostly kills people who were pretty fragile before them got the flu.

Covid-19 does kill some young adults and seems to kill about 10% of the 70-to-80-year. If you aren't nervous, you haven't been paying attention.

Panic isn't a useful reaction, but denying that there's real problem is equally unhelpful.

<snip>

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 7:43:15 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

It's not a small minority that get into serious trouble. The current
data show that 40% of the serious cases are people 20 to 64. France
and Italy are reporting that too.

Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

I'm doing a bit of binge-reading about the 1918 'flu. So far the best
is the first 60% of Laura Spinney's "Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918
and How It Changed The World", i.e. up to the point where she stops
telling the story and starts propounding, um, well,
_less_well_supported_ psychology and public policy.

I'm about a third of the way through Alfred Crosby's "America's
Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918." He has an interesting focus
on some of the individuals directing the response in addition to the
history of the pandemic itself.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:29:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk..


I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.

The issue isn't really the mortality rate. The issue is the number of deaths we can expect. The mortality rate is just a way of calculating the number.

China has has 3,200 people die before they got the infection under control. I think ultimately they did a good job in spite of a poor start. Italy has already surpassed them in a country a fraction of the size.

The fact that the number for mortality rate varies depending on how many infected are not counted because they don't have strong symptoms and don't seek medical help is not the issue. A significant number of people will die from this disease if we don't take it seriously. That's the issue. Comparing it to the "seasonal flu" or the Spanish flu or falling off the roof while cleaning the flu means nothing. If we don't take this disease seriously many people will die. It's that simple.

JL just likes to mentally masturbate and minimize people who do take this seriously. Unlike the other issues he chooses to remain ignorant of, this one is coming at breakneck speed and will be the only issue anyone talks about in this country in two weeks. No one will care about the economy or if they even have jobs when hospitals are incapacitated by the influx of patients.

I'm hoping I'm wrong and the social distancing works and people working from home works and any of the other measures works to slow the progression of this disease. But clearly even people who otherwise seem to be highly intelligent are incapable of understanding the concept of exponential growth.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:31:50 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

Do you believe me now that Covid is growing exponentially?
I told you so.

When did I ever say it wasn't?

--

Rick C.

--+ Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--+ Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 11:29:09 AM UTC+11, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk.

I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-rate/

provides a fairly detailed discussion.

They do include an example of early underestimate of mortality.

The Wuhan figures may also be distorted by China's history of air pollution.

Regardless of all that, Covid-19 clearly kills a lot more people than seasonal flu, and clearly kills people that seasonal flu wouldn't have killed.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Whoey Louie]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:16:40 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:29:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk.


I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu..
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.

The issue isn't really the mortality rate. The issue is the number of deaths we can expect. The mortality rate is just a way of calculating the number.

China has has 3,200 people die before they got the infection under control. I think ultimately they did a good job in spite of a poor start. Italy has already surpassed them in a country a fraction of the size.

The fact that the number for mortality rate varies depending on how many infected are not counted because they don't have strong symptoms and don't seek medical help is not the issue. A significant number of people will die from this disease if we don't take it seriously. That's the issue. Comparing it to the "seasonal flu" or the Spanish flu or falling off the roof while cleaning the flu means nothing. If we don't take this disease seriously many people will die. It's that simple.

Depends what the definition of "many people" is. If it's no worse
that a bad flu season or maybe 2X that, it would be nuts to have
a depression while trying to avoid it. On the other hand if it;s
500K, 2 mil people then that is something that we have to avoid.
Given what we're seeing, I'm confident that if we don't flatten
the curve, the hospitals will be quickly overloaded and we will
have a real disaster. The question is how long this will persist,
how long we have to remain hunkered down and how we avoid a
depression. We are clearly not doing the China model, so we
aren't going to see it put down like they have.

JL just likes to mentally masturbate and minimize people who do take this seriously. Unlike the other issues he chooses to remain ignorant of, this one is coming at breakneck speed and will be the only issue anyone talks about in this country in two weeks.

We're there now.

No one will care about the economy or if they even have jobs when hospitals are incapacitated by the influx of patients.

I'm hoping I'm wrong and the social distancing works and people working from home works and any of the other measures works to slow the progression of this disease. But clearly even people who otherwise seem to be highly intelligent are incapable of understanding the concept of exponential growth..

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

I told you it was growing exponentially over a month ago when
you said it was being controlled.

 

mpm <mpmillard@aol.com> wrote in
news:1039d14d-a4a7-4547-91c5-b400504895f8@googlegroups.com:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 12:50:26 PM UTC-4,
jla...@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
Keep drinking those Gin and Tonics!

Best idea I've heard all day!

Only if you are using Tanqueray!

 

[Rick C]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:42:37 PM UTC-4, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:16:40 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:29:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk.


I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu.
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.

The issue isn't really the mortality rate. The issue is the number of deaths we can expect. The mortality rate is just a way of calculating the number.

China has has 3,200 people die before they got the infection under control. I think ultimately they did a good job in spite of a poor start. Italy has already surpassed them in a country a fraction of the size.

The fact that the number for mortality rate varies depending on how many infected are not counted because they don't have strong symptoms and don't seek medical help is not the issue. A significant number of people will die from this disease if we don't take it seriously. That's the issue. Comparing it to the "seasonal flu" or the Spanish flu or falling off the roof while cleaning the flu means nothing. If we don't take this disease seriously many people will die. It's that simple.

Depends what the definition of "many people" is. If it's no worse
that a bad flu season or maybe 2X that, it would be nuts to have
a depression while trying to avoid it. On the other hand if it;s
500K, 2 mil people then that is something that we have to avoid.
Given what we're seeing, I'm confident that if we don't flatten
the curve, the hospitals will be quickly overloaded and we will
have a real disaster. The question is how long this will persist,
how long we have to remain hunkered down and how we avoid a
depression. We are clearly not doing the China model, so we
aren't going to see it put down like they have.





JL just likes to mentally masturbate and minimize people who do take this seriously. Unlike the other issues he chooses to remain ignorant of, this one is coming at breakneck speed and will be the only issue anyone talks about in this country in two weeks.

We're there now.

No one will care about the economy or if they even have jobs when hospitals are incapacitated by the influx of patients.

I'm hoping I'm wrong and the social distancing works and people working from home works and any of the other measures works to slow the progression of this disease. But clearly even people who otherwise seem to be highly intelligent are incapable of understanding the concept of exponential growth.

--

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

I told you it was growing exponentially over a month ago when
you said it was being controlled.

A month ago was the literal beginning of CV19 showing up in the US. There were 15 cases reported for six days in a row and if I recall some of those were people brought back from a cruise ship.

So you were able to discern infections across the country that no one else could see? Why don't you hire yourself out as a walking CV19 test kit?

It was spreading around the world through travelers, but I had hopes that our government was actually not too incompetent to have test kits available and would test everyone who might have the disease. I was wrong about that.. We didn't test anyone who we didn't think had exposure. So there were people who had the disease without symptoms that got in and started community spreading. There was zero evidence of that in the data at that time. Even the CDC's data referring back to date of infection doesn't show the disease growing in the US until about that time which is based on information gathered up to 14 days after infection.

I guess you are prescient? Doesn't matter. I didn't say it wasn't here and spreading. I may have said the numbers didn't indicate it though which they didn't at the time.

--

Rick C.

-+- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
-+- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[dcaster@krl.org]

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:16:40 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:29:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.



Chloroquine is even safe for pregnant women and nursing mothers. AFAICT
the only side effect is retinopathy for some people who have been given
over _400_grams_ of the stuff over several years.

The ideal strategy would be to let commerce resume, let susceptable
people get it and become immune, let it burn itself out, and treat the
minority of people who are in serious danger.

Especially if there's a good, widely-available treatment for the small
minority of younger people who get into real trouble. Otherwise the
moral question is a bit more nuanced, I think.

Right. Is the life of an otherwise vigorous 20-year-old any more
valuable than the life of a sick and frail 85 yo? Is any life worth a
few billion dollars?



Some social-distancing propaganda would help a bit if the hospitals do
indeed get overloaded.

That would be a bit late of course, given the longish delay between
exposure and severe illness. A bit of modelling would help folks decide
when to do that, perhaps.

Propaganda is cheap, so do it now. Make companies put up signs and
stuff. Wipe the tables and handrails with bleach.

A good idea anyway. I have a spray bottle with diluted bleach on my desk.


I still don't see how this is much different from a mild seasonal flu..
We've never panicked like this or suggested extreme measures before,
in years when flu killed hundreds of times more people.

AFAICT the difference is the apparent huge mortality rate of the Chinese
epidemic. Based on the running metric

deaths
mortality = -------------------
deaths + recoveries

at one point Wuhan was indicating 20% or so--Black Death levels.
Seasonal influenza isn't reported that way.

Massive overestimates of mortality are common when only the seriously
ill are counted.

The issue isn't really the mortality rate. The issue is the number of deaths we can expect. The mortality rate is just a way of calculating the number.

China has has 3,200 people die before they got the infection under control. I think ultimately they did a good job in spite of a poor start. Italy has already surpassed them in a country a fraction of the size.

The fact that the number for mortality rate varies depending on how many infected are not counted because they don't have strong symptoms and don't seek medical help is not the issue. A significant number of people will die from this disease if we don't take it seriously. That's the issue. Comparing it to the "seasonal flu" or the Spanish flu or falling off the roof while cleaning the flu means nothing. If we don't take this disease seriously many people will die. It's that simple.

JL just likes to mentally masturbate and minimize people who do take this seriously. Unlike the other issues he chooses to remain ignorant of, this one is coming at breakneck speed and will be the only issue anyone talks about in this country in two weeks. No one will care about the economy or if they even have jobs when hospitals are incapacitated by the influx of patients.

I'm hoping I'm wrong and the social distancing works and people working from home works and any of the other measures works to slow the progression of this disease.

But clearly even people who otherwise seem to be highly intelligent are incapable of understanding the concept of exponential growth.

You just have to use a different example. Say you have an investment that pays 6 % compounded interest and starts paying $1000 a year . -And you have the investment for 40 years. --

Dan

Rick C.

--- Get 1,000 miles of free Supercharging
--- Tesla referral code - https://ts.la/richard11209

 

[Bill Sloman]

On Friday, March 20, 2020 at 12:42:37 PM UTC+11, Whoey Louie wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 9:16:40 PM UTC-4, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 8:29:09 PM UTC-4, Phil Hobbs wrote:
On 2020-03-19 20:08, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 19:43:03 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 19:12, jlarkin@highlandsniptechnology.com wrote:
On Thu, 19 Mar 2020 18:35:42 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

On 2020-03-19 16:56, Winfield Hill wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

<snip>

I told you it was growing exponentially over a month ago when
you said it was being controlled.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

Over a month ago would have been before the 20th February 2020.

If you look at the logarithmic version of the US case number graph it hits the axis on the 22nd February. In reality there were 35 cases by that date, so you didn't have enough numbers to justify that assertion rationally.

Sadly, you don't think clearly enough for your ravings to be taken as seriously as you'd like.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

 

[Martin Brown]

On 19/03/2020 09:37, Winfield Hill wrote:

skybuck2000@hotmail.com wrote...

The truth in the Netherlands is as follows ...
(ICU=Intensive Care Unit)

1. Less than 300 free intensive care units / beds are
available on a population of 17 million. The rest are
already occupied, in total there are 1150 ICU units.

We're moving to total isolation, to stop any further
spreading beyond those already infected. This isn't
a good long-term solution, and new spreading centers
will start once we relax the isolation. But what we

Indeed. At the moment the only game in town is to try and manage the
infection growth rate and wait for herd immunity to develop slowly
without completely saturating the intensive care units.

It will be interesting to see how long it is before California's health
system gets completely overwhelmed. They are running blind since US
virus testing is such a complete mess. About a week behind the UK on
average and perhaps 3 weeks behind London where things are now tricky.

haven't been hearing much about is new therapeutics,
custom-designed to help severely-compromised Covid-19
victims survive, without the use of ICU beds. Once we
have that, we can safely cease the isolation approach.
The therapeutics will be easier to manufacture, and
only relatively-small quantities will be required,
compared to a vaccine, which must be population-wide.
There are 50 companies working on therapeutics, and
several claim to already have working results.

Most them are pump and dump stock scams with no reality.

Aided and abetted by Trump giving them free publicity.

Much like that phantom blood testing start-up scam.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-45418615

We might have a viable vaccine in 12 months time in sufficient
quantities to do something useful but by then it may be too late.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown

 

[David Brown]

On 19/03/2020 23:41, Rick C wrote:

On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 6:06:23 PM UTC-4, David Brown wrote:
On 19/03/2020 22:37, Rick C wrote:
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 at 4:57:12 PM UTC-4, Winfield Hill
wrote:
Rick C wrote...

Phil Hobbs wrote:

According to the googledocs paper, it works by preventing
the virus from acidifying the cytoplasm in order to break
host proteins down into amino acids to build more viruses.
10 micromolar solution suppresses virus growth completely.

I hope this does pan out.

It's safe to take, right? Doctors are free to prescribe it
off-label, are they not? For very sick patients, find out
very quickly if it works.

That's not how things work. Giving patients drugs does not tell
you if they work - that's why drug testing is so complicated with
double-blind tests, comparative studies, etc. And that is why
laymen - like Trump - should not be making public statements about
drug usage or testing.

Yeah, that's what you do when a drug company is bringing a drug to
market and there is no rush other than for profits. In this
situation we can take a few shortcuts and that study seems pretty
clear. It will be repeated by others I'm sure and the drug companies
are ramping up production. But still, we need doses for millions of
people and the longer it takes the more people who will need to be
dosed. It's hard to ramp up exponentially.

You can certainly take /some/ shortcuts in a situation like this, but
you don't skimp on the real test, especially the double-blind tests.
They are vital.

Drug companies don't do the extensive testing for fun or profit, they do
it because they are required to do it - and they are required to do it,
because it is important.

Because economic concerns are minor here, it should be possible to ramp
up production (or at least, potential for production) in parallel with
the essential testing of the drug. If it turns out that the drug works
as well as hoped, roll-out can start much faster. If it doesn't work
well (or something better replaces it), sell the extra cheap to
countries with malaria.

Not very many docs will prescribe such a drug. You don't know
it won't hurt a patient with this disease. They are saying
ibuprofen is contraindicated for this disease. The WHO is
backing away from that now, but the point is with a new disease
we don't know the effects of a drug. We have testing protocols
specifically to keep people safe.

Chloroquine may also have bad side effects for ICU corona
patients. Hydroxychloroquine seems better, but the main use looks
to be for non-ICU hospital patients.

Where did you read that in the paper?

I've read dozens of web articles about this recently - I don't remember
exactly where. A quick check on Wikipedia (which is not always accurate
or up-to-date, but is usually quite good and unbiased - and easier to
remember than other references!) says that chloroquine may be a problem
for people with heart disease or diabetes. That is not an exact match
for corona patients in ICU, but there's a fair overlap.
Hydroxychloroquine seems to have less side effects and also be more
effective against the virus. But the medical research here is poor as
yet - it all needs good testing.

Knowing the drug is safe for other patients certainly speeds up
safety testing, but it does not eliminate it.

If we treat patients before they need to be in the ICU all the
better, a win-win.

Yes.

More importantly, if we do what we are supposed to do and not
spread this disease, we could be rid of it before any medicines
are available.

The big trouble is that elimination that way is very unlikely.
Countries might manage to get it close to zero spread while they
are on lockdown, but once things are opened again, there will be
new outbreaks.

Yeah, but now that we know about it we will respond much more quickly
and isolate any new infections. Once it is eliminated, it is
eliminated. We only need to worry about being brought in from
elsewhere.

That's not what it means to "eliminate" a virus. Small pox is
eliminated - /no one/ has it, and to the best of our knowledge, there
are no reservoirs in animals.

Coronoa virus will not be eliminated in humans until there are no humans
who have it. Even then, it may not be eliminated entirely if it is
still found in animals that are likely to transmit it to humans.

You can eliminate a virus like this in a particular area for a
particular time, but it is only temporary. If it is done by the disease
fading out due to lockdowns (i.e., we get the spreading factor below 1
and wait long enough), you can be confident that outbreaks /will/ occur
again - no country will keep their lockdowns in place until every other
country is virus free. If you eliminate (or mostly eliminate) the virus
with vaccines, then outbreaks will not occur because they can't get started.

You are absolutely right that after a partial elimination from
lockdowns, people bringing in the virus from outside would be the main
concern. And countries could respond much quicker now that they know
what they are looking for, and how to deal with it - and presumably by
then they will have plenty of test kits. It would, however, mean a huge
imposition on travel (not nearly as much as with current lockdowns
around the world, but very different from what we are used to). And
even with good testing, we'll see airports closed down just because
someone arrives with a cold.


Lockdowns, therapeutic medicine, and vaccines - all of these are needed
to deal with this thing well. And it won't be properly over until a
sizeable proportion of the world is vaccinated.

It has spread too far for containment to eliminate it.

That is not logical.

Containment works when there a few people who have a disease, and you
can track each one and their movements. We are /well/ beyond that.
Hopefully lockdowns and containment measures will contain it - but they
won't eliminate it.

(Don't get me wrong here - containment is far and away the most
important measure at the moment, and could manage to keep the death toll
in the thousands rather than the millions. But containment is very
disruptive, and while it might be relaxed a bit later, we will not get
back to the freedom of movement and lifestyle that we had before until a
vaccine is in place.)

If we can't get a vaccine, countries are going to have to be ready
for quick lockdowns every time a new outbreak flares up. Still,
careful openness with lots of testing at borders and the risk of
new lockdowns would be a lot better than continued lockdown for
many months or years.

We already do this for any number of diseases. In the process we
have essentially removed them from existence in many countries. This
one spreads more rapidly, but that means we need travel
restrictions.

It was only a couple of weeks ago people were still going out on
cruise ships knowing there was a risk of this virus! We will have
learned a lesson from this virus.

I hope you are right. It's amazing how little some people have learned
so far, however.